Rock Your Retirement Show

Are you retired or about to retire?
Retirement isn't just about money.
In our show we talk about the other things that will impact you such as:
Social and Family
Adventure and Travel
Volunteer and Philanthropy
Spiritual/soul
Sex in retirement (I usually have therapists discuss this topic)
Helping your parents/sandwich generation issues Baby Boomers are often helping both their children and their parents at the same time.
Our goal is to help you have a great retirement, regardless of the amount of money you've saved. We want you to Rock Your Retirement!

In this episode, I talk with Veronica Mitchell about the sensitive topic of taking the keys away.

Veronica is a friend of mine who I have known for awhile. We have served on the same committees at the Caregiver Coalition of San Diego and also the San Diego County Council on Aging. Veronica is an advocate for seniors, women, and caregivers. She is a guest blogger and writes her own blog featured on her website. She is passionate about prevention of Elder Abuse and Scams, along with helping families take the keys from their senior loved ones.

In this episode, I talk with Laura Barish about preventing financial elder abuse.

Laura is President and CEO of AltaGolden. She has a passion for working with older adults and loves her job. Laura is responsible for marketing, community outreach, corporate management, and she also sometimes works as a caregiver so that she understands what it takes to be a great caregiver. Laura is on the clinical affairs committee for the San Diego Dementia Consortium.

In our discussion, Laura and I talk about some of the scams that are out there.

In this episode, I talk with Angela about ways to improve memory skills.

Angela G. Gentile, M.S.W., R.S.W. has over 25 years of experience working with older adults and their families in a variety of capacities. She has worked in health care, private practice, long-term care, home care, and non-profits. She is currently employed full-time as a Geriatric Mental Health Clinician and enjoys writing, traveling, photography and exploring what it means to age well.

Angela began working with older people at a very young age. She found she really enjoyed it and made a life long career. She is the "go-to" person if friends and family have questions regarding aging and it has also helped her with her own parents as they age.

Caregiving is relentless. It is exhausting beyond belief and caregivers need a break. Adult Day Programs (AKA Adult Day Care) are a way for people to get a break. They can drop their loved one off in a safe environment.

I spoke with Lisa Tyburski from The Glenner Centers which offers Adult Day Programs AKA Adult Daycare Center from their 3 locations in San Diego. Lisa shared with me the powerful story about how The Glenner started. It was founded in 1982 by Dr. Glenner and his wife Joy. Dr. Glenner was a researcher at the UCSD school of medicine. He was working to advance research in the Alzheimer’s field. One night around midnight, he and his wife Joy received a phone call from the husband of one of Dr. Glenner’s Alzheimers patients. The husband, who had been a caregiver to his wife was frantic. He was absolutely at the end of his rope and he had a loaded gun in his hand. He was going to murder his wife and commit suicide. Dr. Glenner knew he needed to come up with a solution to help the caregivers.

You can go to work, run errands, take a nap, or whatever you need to do to tend to the other areas of your life. You know that your loved one is being taken care of.

Michael’s mother had a stroke and could no longer care for herself, so Michael became her caregiver.

He discovered the constant need to repeat care giving information to various caregivers so he ended up carrying a binder with him that contained his parent's medical documents. During this period Michael’s company hired an Elder Family Resource person to help manage the complexities of her care.

James, a longtime friend of Micheal’s, had a similar experience. His father developed sudden onset Parkinson's after his mother passed away and so couldn’t care for himself. James lived far away, but his sisters lived near his dad. As his dad’s needs increased, it became increasingly difficult to manage the household and care giving information between siblings.

Michael and James talked about their respective care giving challenges and the need for a way to store and share critical documents became obvious. This led to their forming ElderAdmin to fulfill this very important need.

If you are currently a family caregiver, or about to become a family caregiver, you need to know about Fiduciaries, and what they do.

A Fiduciary is responsible for the following:

Medical

Psychological

Social

Environmental

Legal

Financial

What you might not realize is that Family Members are also responsible for those same areas. Many family members don't realize that they are responsible for all six areas, and tend to only focus on legal and medical issues.

So many people are taking care of aging parents and still have children of their own living at home. This is the "Sandwich Generation"

Iris was involved of taking care of both of her aging parents. She tells a story about noticing her her father was wearing two watches while at a doctor's visit. This small detail lead to an emergency surgery for a hemorrhage in his brain.

Chris placed her mom in an assisted living facility, and over the course of her stay, saw things she didn’t like. The actions by the owners made her feel that her mom’s health and safety were jeopardized.

Chris filed a lawsuit after her mom’s death, and two years later the law suit settled she started looking for ways to leverage what she had learned to benefit other families who had to make assisted living placement decisions.

Their hope is that their work levels the playing field for consumers of assisted living services. They want them to be empowered and knowledgeable advocates for their resident in assisted living. Read more HERE.

On the 10/17/16 episode of the Rock Your Retirement show, Kathe interviewed celebrity Dave Jackson about his experience with Alzheimer's disease.

Dave Jackson runs the School of Podcasting. Frances McGrogan, a previous guest, and I talked about how he helped us learn how to podcast in episode 21.

This chat wasn't about podcasting though. It was about his experience with Alzheimer's Disease, which is a form of Dementia. Dementia is a heartbreaking disease, and Dave tells his story about how he was able to deal with it

Why Muscle Re-Calibration?

Neil has been correcting injuries fort the past 16 years. He has amassed over 25,000 hours of personalized exercise and injury work. Furthermore, during the past 5 years he has been incorporating Ki-Hara Resistance Stretching into his work and the results have been profound! This technique helps with Muscle Re-calibration.

Some of his clients were told that they’d never run again and they began running in as little as 8 weeks. Read more HERE.

Carrie McClellan is helping seniors through ElderHelp of San Diego.

Elderhelp is a non profit organization that helps seniors live independently and with dignity.

Carrie started her career as a Social Services Director in a Skilled Nursing Facility.

She worked with many older adults and their families to develop a safe discharge plan when they were ready to return home again. This was an eye opener for her as she realized that many older adults were going home with little to no support from family or friends. If someone was on a fixed income, it was even more difficult. This is when she learned about ElderHelp of San Diego and she’s been the Outreach Manager for nearly 5 years now. She works in the community to ensure those in need are aware of all of the programs and services that ElderHelp of San Diego has to offer. She also recruis the volunteers who help provide many of these services. They are always looking for volunteers! Read more HERE:

Jonna considers the day a success when they can help a family feel secure that their loved one is comfortable and cared for in the security of their own home. She helps seniors stay safely in their homes. Their own homes. Often retirees are torn between their own retirement needs and the needs of their parents.

We discuss Enduring Care which offers reduced rates for people on a fixed income.

Susi Vine began downsizing with Senior Move Masters in November 2010, and since then, she has led crews as Team Leader, and she provides consultations for new clients who are considering their move. Her crews packing and unpack their client's homes and help them with downsizing.

Susi earned a BFA in Theatre Design and Technology, and has studied Residential Design. Her experience in design, space planning, and universal accessibility support the needs of Senior Move Masters’ clients looking to de-clutter, downsize, and relocate to a new home or age in place.

Toby Cohantz's technology can help your parents stay in their home longer. How does he do this? He works with several organizations that work with seniors, and particularly, Fall Prevention. These organizations include:

Life Support Medical, a research and development company where he is the director of the Mobile Fall Risk Assessment Lab

All of these companies can help your parents stay in their home longer than if they were trying to do everything on their own. The reason why many people need to leave their home is because it is no longer safe to live there.

Toby runs the first mobile gait lab int he country, run in conjunction with the New Mexico State University. The lab collects data on how seniors walk. They generate a report on the spot, that gives a risk assessment for falls. That data is now being used to create products and services for seniors, and will be launching in the 3rd quarter of 2016.

These will include Smart Phone and Tablet apps that can help your parents stay in their home.

For example, the app will monitor your loved one's gait, and if it changes, an alert will be generated.

It will also work as a medical alert system, that will alert you (or someone else) if there is a fall. Because their current in home systems have alerts that go out in case the battery begins to die, Toby expects that the apps will have similar features. Systems like this are called PERS, or Personal Emergency Response Systems.

Toby's company has backup systems that catch additional activity such as whens someone cannot push a button because they've had a stroke or have fallen out of bed. they've also considered the fact that many people will remove their devices so can install buttons in areas of the house such as near the bed, in the shower, and in the kitchen. These are the places where most falls happen.

Virtual Care Givers (remember the Jetson's TV show?) are coming out at the end of the year. Stay tuned in to his website to hear more about that as the technology develops.

Mitch Au is very close to his family. His own grandmother had Alzheimer's disease, and he watched her suffer for 20 years. His family is most important to him, so when his aunt and uncle needed a break, additional family intervention was needed. Because of this, he moved to help with the care giving and to give his aunt and uncle some respite care when they needed a break. During this time he learned a great deal about caring for the elderly. His aunt had a 24 hour care giver and was able to stay in her own home.

This was when he first learned about how to help your parents find a safe place to live (or grandparents as the case was here).

Mitch and I discussed the differences between having a 24 hour caregiver and having more social interaction through senior living or adult day care facilities. Your parent's own home may be safe, but it might not provide the social interaction that a loved one needs.

He really liked the senior care industry due to the experience he had with his grandmother and opened a couple of board and care homes, which are highly regulated. These homes must be certified with an RCFE (residential care facility for the elderly) licensed. He actually purchased the business, and another home a few months later.

During the day he had two caregivers and a cook in each facility. There was also "awake" staff 24 hours a day in each business. Both of the homes were in Arizona, and they found out that moving from San Diego to Arizona was too much of a culture shock, so moved back to San Diego. It's tough to move from perfect weather to anywhere other than San Diego!

He moved back to San Diego for the perfect weather, and normally works with the adult children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or friends of elderly adults who are no longer safe to live at home. He helps you help your parents find a safe place to live. The organization that he works for is called "A Place for Mom" which is a national placement agency that can help your parents find a safe place to live.

Many people call when they are in crisis, but you don't have to wait until there is a crisis to start speaking with them about their living situation.

One benefit of working with Mitch is that he can help your parents find a home even if they do not live in the same state you live in.

Listen to today's episode to find out more about your options for Senior Living Communities and also Home Care.

In today's episode we learn how one family was able to get their father to finally get a stair lift to make him safe at home.

The family was very nervous and wanted to make sure he wasn't going to fall down the stairs. They wanted him to be safe at home. Dad was stubborn and didn't want to admit that he was getting older, and they were nervous knowing that he could fall down the stairs at any moment.